K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences

VICE keybindings and Berzerk Redux

I have been using VICE as an emulator for nigh on a decade now, and in spite of that, I found out something new about it the other day.

One “shortcoming” that I always regretted in the application was its lack of configurable keystrokes for joysticks, in the xaw-interface. The version built with Gnome dependencies is able to assign new keys to joystick actions, which is important on laptops because the default keys are knucklebusters, what with the NumLk and Fn-keys and triple-pressing and so forth.

What I didn’t realize was that yes, those configuration menus are only available if VICE is built with the Gnome interface, but VICE doesn’t need those dependencies to run.

In other words, if you build VICE with the Gnome UI, you can install it in systems that don’t use Gnome, and still access those menus. To wit:

Well I’ll be darned. All this time I was kicking the wall wishing I could easily assign different keys to VICE, and the net effect was only my banged-up toes.

That alone isn’t worth mentioning in a post, so here’s further proof that the C64 is the immortal computer system: Berzerk Redux, in the 1.10 release.

Yes, Berzerk is nothing new, and so mentioning a version released as recently as last month doesn’t do much to shake up the world of computer gaming. But if you liked the original stand-up arcade game you’ll probably like this one too. It’s tight to the original, with similar shapes and game play but with much improved sound effects and speech.

I don’t remember playing Berzerk on the C64 as much as the Atari 2600, but this is a good diversion for half an hour or so. And the beauty of it is, now you can manage your keybindings, even if you don’t have Gnome in place.🙄

P.S.: Before you Ubuntu users try installing this out of the repositories, take a look at this.